sysmgr@KING.ENG.UMD.EDU (Doug Mohney) (11/02/90)
In article <3686@skye.ed.ac.uk>, richard@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Richard Tobin) writes: >With luck, within a year or so, they may be two industrial-strength >free Unixes available - GNU, from the Free Software Foundation, and >4.4-detox (ie BSD "detoxified" - with the AT&T code removed). But who will provide support for GNU & the 4.4? Will there be independent consulting firms started up which charge $$$$/hour for support of these OSes? I know it will make the hackers happy, but for those poor folks (such as myself) who prefer not to go recompile the OS, it isn't going to make much difference....they'll still end up purchasing products with a "supported" UNIX bundled in.
ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) (11/02/90)
In article <0093F120.388EDA40@KING.ENG.UMD.EDU>, sysmgr@KING.ENG.UMD.EDU (Doug Mohney) writes: > In article <3686@skye.ed.ac.uk>, richard@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Richard Tobin) writes: > >With luck, within a year or so, they may be two industrial-strength > >free Unixes available - GNU, from the Free Software Foundation, and > >4.4-detox (ie BSD "detoxified" - with the AT&T code removed). > But who will provide support for GNU & the 4.4? Will there be independent > consulting firms started up which charge $$$$/hour for support of these OSes? > I know it will make the hackers happy, but for those poor folks (such as > myself) who prefer not to go recompile the OS, it isn't going to make much > difference....they'll still end up purchasing products with a "supported" > UNIX bundled in. There already _are_ support companies that support GNU products; quite a few, in fact. I don't see any reason to expect the level of support available for 4.4-detox or GNU to be inferior in practical terms to the level of support from some manufacturers. (Never mind the new features, I just want the _old_ ones to work.) It's also worth noting that people supporting 4.4-detox have an incentive to make it work on the machine you already have, instead of encouraging you to upgrade your hardware. Is there an architectural issue here? There's certainly an issue concerning the hardware industry. I remember what O/S support was like for a B6700; you sent in your form describing your problem (and as you had MCP and compiler sources 4 times out of 5 you sent in a patch), and about 6 months later there was a new release with a list of all the mistakes that had been fixed and a list of the mistakes that were still open, and yours was in there somewhere. This doesn't seem to happen with UNIX. _Some_ companies fix things fairly promptly and worry a lot about quality control, but _some_ that I've come across basically wait for the next release from AT&T. I've reported mistakes in utilities that were still there years later. Is there any reason why a hardware vendor couldn't ship *and support* 4.4-detox? (Market forces are a different question.) -- The problem about real life is that moving one's knight to QB3 may always be replied to with a lob across the net. --Alasdair Macintyre.
davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr) (11/02/90)
In article <0093F120.388EDA40@KING.ENG.UMD.EDU> sysmgr@KING.ENG.UMD.EDU (Doug Mohney) writes: | I know it will make the hackers happy, but for those poor folks (such as | myself) who prefer not to go recompile the OS, it isn't going to make much | difference....they'll still end up purchasing products with a "supported" | UNIX bundled in. Amen. I have written one (small) o/s from scratch myself, and two small compilers, and been on teams to write another o/s and compiler. I have maintained a commercial o/s at our site in spite of the best efforts of the vendor to degrade performance and reliability at every turn. I think I have a reasonably good idea of the effort involved in keeping these things going, and I would *never* roll my own if there were a viable commercial alternative. I'm sure a lot of people will be selling the GNU o/s as a supported product, and the customer won't care a bit about the availability of source code in most cases. -- bill davidsen (davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen) The Twin Peaks Halloween costume: stark naked in a body bag
tif@doorstop.austin.ibm.com (Paul Chamberlain) (11/03/90)
sysmgr@KING.ENG.UMD.EDU (Doug Mohney) writes: >In article <3686@skye.ed.ac.uk>, richard@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Richard Tobin) writes: >>With luck, within a year or so, they may be two industrial-strength >>free Unixes available - GNU, from the Free Software Foundation, and >>4.4-detox (ie BSD "detoxified" - with the AT&T code removed). >But who will provide support for GNU & the 4.4? Will there be independent >consulting firms started up which charge $$$$/hour for support of these OSes? I'd like to think that the big impact of such things would be to the guy that just bought a 386 home computer and is willing to learn Unix to get its benefits but doesn't want to pay $1000 when he can get dos for $40 or so. Nobody really supports dos, they just release a new version now and then. Somebody will take one of these free Unixes and provide binaries for common machines for minimal cost. No support is necessary, just make the next version available at about the same price. Those that need support (what does that mean anyway -- quick bug fixes or questions answered or new functions or what) will pay a higher price, just like they do now but not as high since source licenses aren't involved. Heck, maybe I'll do it. Paul Chamberlain | I do NOT represent IBM. tif@doorstop, sc30661 at ausvm6 512/838-7008 | ...!cs.utexas.edu!ibmchs!auschs!doorstop.austin.ibm.com!tif
billg@hitachi.uucp (Bill Gundry) (11/03/90)
From article <4187@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au>, by ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe): > In article <0093F120.388EDA40@KING.ENG.UMD.EDU>, sysmgr@KING.ENG.UMD.EDU (Doug Mohney) writes: >> In article <3686@skye.ed.ac.uk>, richard@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Richard Tobin) writes: >> >With luck, within a year or so, they may be two industrial-strength >> >free Unixes available - GNU, from the Free Software Foundation, and >> >4.4-detox (ie BSD "detoxified" - with the AT&T code removed). ... >> But who will provide support for GNU & the 4.4? Will there be independent >> consulting firms started up which charge $$$$/hour for support of these OSes? ... > There already _are_ support companies that support GNU products; quite a > few, in fact. I don't see any reason to expect the level of support The one issue that *has* to be addressed is that of third party software support. While you may be able to get a "free" UNIX and obtain some level of service for it, you will probably suffer from a lack of commercial applications. While the "hackers" may pooh on the idea of commercial applications, for most companies, and indviduals, there has to be some availability of commerical grade software that runs a variety of systems and is suported by some type of maintenance agreement. If I was a software developer I would certainley concentrate on the commercial UNIX versions. For myself, Bill Gundry